J Dilla - Ruff Draft

J Dilla - Ruff DraftStones Throw, 2007 (first CD issue; originally released on Mummy Records, 2003)Produced by Jay Dee (J Dilla)With the deserved hype that attended last year's release of J Dilla's masterpiece, Donuts, and the aftermath of his untimely death at age 32 within a week of that release, more people than ever before recognized the gifts he possessed and the exact breadth of his influence on hip hop. Dilla had produced an enormous amount of excellent music, as Stones Throw's invaluable and comprehensive discography proves. As for Donuts, it's a landmark recording, not just of instrumental hip hop but of hip hop and popular music in general; it transcends its genre, less an extraordinary hip hop album than a work of pop art both maddeningly infectious and highly personal to the artist. Not that I mean to say the tracks on it aren't phenomenal MC fodder, as Ghostface and the Roots, among others, have used beats from Donuts with success.As the bringers of Donuts, Peanut Butter Wolf's Stones Throw label have been put in the unfortunate but duty-bound position to handle Dilla's posthumous legacy. They have been doing a bang-up job, and the latest showing of their effort is the reissue and first CD release of his 2003 Ruff Draft EP. The liner notes by Ronnie Reese are helpful to understanding the context of the EP. Reese explains that in '03, Dilla was interested in rejoining the underground, both sonically and business-wise, after years of work for major label artists. He was in MCA purgatory, with a one-year, two-album contract that got buried under a bureaucratic mess and was therefore never fulfilled. Jaylib's Champion Sound came out also in '03, Jaylib being his collaboration with fellow beat-genius Madlib and the LP being one of the finer examples of both his production and his rapping.In fact, if I were to suggest one or the other, I would recommend Champion Sound over Ruff Draft. Of course, any fan of Dilla's overall output will own both, and that is good. The package is smart, two CDs with bonus tracks housed in cardboard O-card with giant, bold announcement lettering. (A smarter package is the limited boxed set with a T-shirt reading "TURN IT UP!" and a cassette version of the EP, in reference to Dilla's insistence on the intro that the jams are "straight off the mu'fuckin' cassette." To be truthful, I wish I had the tape!) The music, however, is decidedly more modest, with only 54 minutes of music spread across both CDs - and half of it is instrumental versions of the other half. However, again, Dilla fans should have no complaints, especially when it comes to the instrumentals.The MC on Ruff Draft is Jay Dee himself, and the liner notes devote over a paragraph to the fact that he was "reviled" as a rapper. This status makes sense to some degree, but it isn't fair either. Excepting the Slum Village crew, his closest MC confidants at the time were Detroit party-rappers Frank N Dank, and his style was even more basic than theirs. But he was surely competent, especially as an MC in Slum Village and Jaylib, and there is something admirable about his lyrical economy on Ruff Draft; if party-rap says nothing with a lot of well-placed words, here J Dilla said nothing with fewer. Still, I know for sure that I will return less to the vocal disc than to the instrumental disc, as any MCing that isn't exceptional often takes away from Dilla's compositions.Most of Ruff Draft is comprised of the type of production that hallmarks his last few years, at least before the soul-genre-plundering of Donuts-- dreamy samples and hazy synths co-exist with heavy beats designed for bouncing. Among the 12 different beats represented, there are two I feel I should mention, mainly to extol the glory of the instrumental disc. "Wild" is well-described with the word "bonkers." As fun as anything he's ever put out, it tumbles around with loose and jazzy tom-and-snare drumming, a quiet electric guitar loop, one note on a woozy synth patch, and a child singing a hilarious interpretation of "Cum On Feel the Noize," all anchored by claps on the two and four. Let alone the premise, the execution of "Wild" is by any means entertaining enough to carry weight without an MC.Then there's "Nothing Like This," also featured recently on the Stones Throw/Adult Swim compilation Chrome Children. It's built on a backwards sample of a double-lead guitar riff from a rock song and a crushing primal rock beat, and Dilla fattens it with his signature subtle touches. On the vocal version of the track, Dilla doesn't rap; he sings. He has a good voice, but he sings the same tune-fragment over and over along with the sample, and after about 30 seconds, I begin considering a switch to the instrumental, which is twice as compelling just for the chance to listen, without distraction, into Dilla's depth of field. The bassline that comes out of the reversed sample, the mastery of audio editing that would eventually become evident on Donuts, the musical ear that leads to each enriching decision, and the power that results - Dilla was a producer's producer, a deep-listener's producer, and even occasionally the people's producer all at once.-Spencer Owen+ Stones Throw's J Dilla page+ Full Jay Dee/J Dilla discography from Stones Throw